FS6’s Guarantees for Regenerative Agriculture (GRA) is rewriting the rules of agricultural finance, putting loan guarantees and loan performance data to work for the producers and lenders that conventional systems have long overlooked.

Quick Facts

• Founding date: 2024
• Fund size: (Please specify number)
• Typical investment Size: (please specify)

Let’s start at the beginning — what inspired Guarantees for Regenerative Agriculture (GRA)?

It came from a personal experience. FS6’s Executive Director was a first-generation female regenerative livestock producer, and when she tried to finance her own operation, both Farm Credit and the USDA Farm Service Agency initially turned her down. The reasoning? Her operation was “too risky” mostly because it didn’t fit the kind of performance data or farm program eligibility that conventional underwriting expects from commodity farms.

That rejection turned into a bigger realization: this wasn’t just her problem. Producers who move away from commodity agriculture routinely lose access to subsidies, crop insurance, and other public backstops that lenders often rely on to de-risk their lending portfolios. And the scorecard models banks rely on have quietly reinforced discrimination against BIPOC, women-led, and first-generation producers for years. GRA grew out of wanting to fix that by offering guarantees to encourage more lending into the sector while also collecting the data that proves patient, flexible lending works, so USDA and Farm Credit have a reason to change.

“Producers who move away from conventional agriculture often lose access to credit, crop insurance, and publicly funded backstops, forced to choose between regenerative practices and affordable capital. GRA exists to end that trade-off.”

So what actually makes GRA’s approach different from how a bank would underwrite a loan?

A few things, and they build on each other. First, GRA looks beyond conventional measures of credit risk when deciding which lenders and loan portfolios to support. Rather than relying solely on commodity-focused underwriting models, we aim to support lenders whose approach recognizes long-term ecological resilience, diversified revenue streams, and the realities of regenerative agriculture. The goal isn’t to replace a lender’s underwriting—it’s to expand what’s possible by sharing risk with lenders who are already innovating.

The second difference is structural: GRA uses unfunded guarantees. That means philanthropic capital doesn’t have to sit idle waiting to be deployed. Assets remain invested and are only called upon if a guarantee is needed, making guarantees a far more capital-efficient tool than traditional grantmaking.

And the third is the data. GRA aggregates loan performance across its portfolio to build the evidence base around regenerative lending. Over time, that data can help lenders refine their underwriting and give policymakers the real-world performance data needed to modernize agricultural finance.

Can you give us a real example of how this works?

One opportunity we’re exploring illustrates the model well. A mission-driven agricultural lender serving historically underserved farmers currently relies on a capital structure that requires approximately 20% grant capital to unlock the remaining 80% from impact investors. That grant capital must be continually replenished simply to maintain the same level of lending. A GRA guarantee could instead provide that 20% credit enhancement, allowing the lender to deploy more capital to producers rather than repeatedly fundraising to support the same lending capacity.

If losses occurred, GRA and the lender would share them proportionally while tracking loan performance across the portfolio. Over time, that data would help demonstrate whether more flexible, borrower-centered underwriting performs as well as conventional lending, creating evidence that can inform lenders, investors, and policymakers alike.

How do you actually measure whether it’s working?

Each guaranteed loan is tracked across four dimensions: social equity, food system resilience, operational impact, and agroecological outcomes, alongside traditional credit metrics such as repayment, defaults, and restructurings.

But the real question GRA is trying to answer isn’t just “did the loan get repaid.” It’s “did it perform as well as or better than a conventional loan.” If flexible, borrower-aligned underwriting holds up just as well, that undercuts the whole assumption that this kind of lending is riskier. That’s the evidence they’re feeding back to USDA, Farm Credit, and private lenders.

Who’s the ideal investor for something like this?

Someone who’s ready to go beyond writing a grant check. GRA is looking for partners who are comfortable with tools like unfunded guarantees, who see risk-sharing as the actual point rather than something to minimize, and who care about the bigger picture — using innovative finance, rigorous data, and better underwriting to help reshape how agricultural capital is deployed at scale..